Come All Ye Lost
by Wofl
Summary: They are animals with bullets for teeth, meals shredded and left to rot instead of consumed. EdHawkeye. Angstgoresmut. No Spoilers. Rated M for Mature


This was written for fmafuhq on lj. May's challenge was Ed. I chose Ed/Hawkeye and this is what came from it. I wanted to write something different, and too many pepole choose to write this pairing off as crack or just ooc and so I tried to make this fic as real as possible. I didn't spare emotions and it's not supposed to be sweet or pretty. It's war; gritty and messy and desperate and that's what I tried to portray for this fic.

Title: Come All Ye Lost  
Author: wofliron on lj  
Rating: NC-17  
Genre: angst  
Pairing: Ed x Hawkeye  
Warnings: smut, angst, slight gore

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_ I fought in a war, and I didn't know where it would end  
It stretched before me infinitely, I couldn't really think  
Of the day beyond now, keep your head down pal  
There's trouble plenty in this hour, this day  
I can see hope I can see light - Damien Rice_

Their breath puffs up in spiraling clouds, rising to meet the dawn and fading against the harsh glare of the sun's first rays. Graveyard silence greets the morning – the first time it's been quiet in days, and the flutter of raven wings echoes out over no man's land. Sharp caws rent a jagged crack through the silence as two birds spar, fighting over the choice bits of carnage.

"They always go for the eyes first," Ed mumbles, watching the bitter rivalry, black wings beat at each other, beaks like sabers, pecking at one another for such a trivial prize; their battleground – the battered torso of a fresh corpse. A macabre sight in itself; the fact that they are battling over the right to peck out and eat the eyes only makes the display worse. Ed turns away with a shudder.

"Not long now," a hand on his shoulder, fingers spreading comfort down through Ed's chest like a beam of reassurance. He turns, wide eyes (haunted, troubled, horrified, _ohgodwhathashedone?_) blinking up at his comrade. She smiles down at him, features hard but her eyes manage to forage out some warmth to offer. How, he doesn't know; he feels so drained, hasn't smiled in weeks, hope sucked from his very marrow, linchpins pulled from beneath his skin, robbing him of life, crumbling, and he is left watching crows fight for the right to eat the dead.

War.

"We should get some rest," she urges, squeezing his shoulder, "we're advancing tomorrow."

Tomorrow? Today? Does time exist anymore? To him is seems to have stuttered and faltered like a broken toy, something that comes and goes like a capricious foe. Time marked by how long it's been since the last time a familiar face fell, body stiffened, lost, left amongst the piles of the slain over war-grazed territory.

Mustang has been dead two weeks.

Two weeks? Really? To him it seems more like two years, span stretching out like a cat in the sun, yawn gaping wide to swallow moments in slow motion until he can't remember a time when Mustang was not a past tense, when he was snapping his fingers beside the rest of them, sending fire blazing to meet the enemies with undeniable combustion.

Or maybe it's been two days. He recalls with gruesomely perfect detail, the terror of his face, eyes gaping wide, blood dribbling over his chin as a bayonet slid into his stomach with lucky precision. A jerk and a twist and the man had been on his knees, even in his last moments drawing the strength to snap and take his killer to the grave with him. 

"Edward?"

The boy (Man. No boy could see what he's seen, do what he's done, hundreds of lives spent by his hand) starts, realizes that he's been staring at the crows again and several moments have slipped away from him while he wasn't looking.

With a grunt, he stands; feels the weariness that grips him by the bones. Rest _would_ be nice, he concedes to himself, trying out a smile to repay Hawkeye for making her worry. It doesn't work. He feels the muscles twitch, pull up at the corners, and shatter. He face crumples before completion and he fixes her with a hollow stare.

"Is this worth it?" The words dribble from his mouth before he can stop them, eyes straying back to the crows, fight fought, battle won – and lost, and the loser is left to peck at the bones. Edward has to turn away; can't watch as razorblade beaks strip flesh from bone and pitch the meat back into their throats in bloody strips.

"Was he worth it, you mean," she retorts with no preamble. Her hand returns to his shoulder, nudging him, urging him back towards the camp.

"Yeah," and he feels his voice crumble in his throat, broken when it emerges.

"I don't think that's for us to decide."

_She doesn't know_

He laughs then, a rusty contorted abortion of a sound that cracks and lifts up into the early morning mist with a quiet echo. "It's not like we have a choice. It's funny, isn't it? We're just as bad as them, trying to justify murder."

"We're protecting lives, Edward." He snorts bitterly; notes that she sounds as if she is trying to convince herself.

"By taking them away?" A noise like a barking dog snaps across the morning and Edward is surprised to discover that the grotesque excuse for a laugh has come from him. "That's some logic."

The camp slides into view like a mirage, tents breaking up the horizon. There is little sign of life. The majority of those that aren't asleep are on guard duty, out away on the outskirts of their laughable refuge.

As if anything can be considered safe out here.

"It's war," she ventures at last, as they near their tent. She strips back the zipper and holds the flap open for him. "If it made sense, we wouldn't be here."

"Stupid," he snarls, yanking off his jacket and hurling himself to the ground like a spoiled child in the throes of a tantrum. "It's all fucking stupid."

The fact that she does not scold him for the flare of temper and simply sighs heavily instead tells Edward that she does not disagree.

He grunts, kicking off his boots and pulls the military issue blanket up around his shoulders. The silence doesn't sit well with him, stealing up beside him and crashing down around his ears. Phantom screams of shells falling slides through his consciousness like a fat leech, sucking away any chance of peaceable thoughts.

He cannot sleep, even though heaviness pulls at his eyelids like weights. And the silence stretches far past the awkward stage; he knows she is still awake too because he doesn't hear her deep even breaths that would signify sleep.

"We're keeping them safe, right?" he whispers at last, some deep part of him pining for reassurance.

"Al will be safe."

Damn her impermeable ability to raze through his words and strip them to their essential purpose. How does she _do_ that?

And with his name comes the gaping wound, fortitude fallen away as loneliness rears its ugly head, tendril tongue snaking out to lap over his heart. Al, back in Central keeping up their apartment by himself; Ed can imagine him scanning the headlines each morning over coffee, worried that they will foretell tragedy. Afraid to open the mailbox because today might be the day he receives a letter that his brother is lost.

And Edward can only worry that Al might do something stupid and sign up himself so that he might be a comfort to Ed when the shaky realization that he's killed again and again with little to no thought applied to the lives that pattered down around him storms upon him. It's only a matter of time before he goes insane; before does something imprudent in an attempt to prevent it.

It could happen. Edward might spend another year or five in this grime and butchery and never know. War did that to people, snatched at their everyday concerns, swapped them out for fear of life and death and negated their ability to ponder the comings and goings of home.

He can go days without thinking of anything here, except the way his heart clenches when his alchemy sends another wave of enemies to ruin. But Al always manages to smuggle himself into Edward's thoughts.

He wonders how much it would hurt Al if he told his little brother that every time another person died by his hand, he kept to his feet and gripped onto his sanity only because he told himself it was the only way to keep Al, Winry, everyone safe.

It was selfish of him to want to share the burden of his conscience.

"I miss him." Edward squeezes his eyes shut and rolls onto his back. No tears, just a weariness that begins in his chest and spreads like poison until he is saturated in it; drowning. He can hear her moving, but whether it's just another attempt to get comfortable or if she's sitting up to look at him like the circus freak that he is, he doesn't know – doesn't care to know.

"We all miss someone," she soothes, not to make light of his own personal heartaches, but to exemplify that he isn't alone, that there are thousands of soldiers fighting and falling in valiant attempts to keep friends and family safe. That he is not a fool for his feelings.

He is startled to feel fingers in his hair; her blunted nails picking out the tie and combing out the braid. He opens his eyes and finds himself staring up into her face, softened somehow; different from the way it had been back out on the battlefield.

Like a child.

He sits up, feeling her fingers catch in the greasy tangles of his hair, winces a bit when a few strands pull away from his head, but it is no worse than when he tries to braid his hair without a glove over his automail. "Who do you miss?"

Her brow furrows, and she averts her eyes, gaze falling out through the gap in the tent flap; stone, unreadable. It's all the answer he needs.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs.

"Don't be," she snaps suddenly, eyes back on his, pupils like black lava in their intensity. "He wouldn't want you to be."

"I—" he falters, the moment crooked as it hangs between them. It seems the easiest thing in the world to lean in, press his face into the crook of her neck and wrap his arms around her back. He can feel the way she's tensed, but he can't bring himself to pull away, let himself be robbed of the human contact he's not had in nearly nine months. After a moment, she relaxes and returns the embrace, some part of her fortress crumbling.

"Let's pretend for a minute," she tells him; and the realization that this is her way of opening up to him slaps him across the face.

"Why?" he pulls back, gold eyes squinting as he searches her features for rhyme or reason; still foolhardy enough to believe there could be any amidst war.

Her lips are dry and cracked; the south is always dry, even in what would be the winter months back home. He can taste blood and smoke in her mouth and he is too stunned to even wonder about why she is kissing him. He only knows that it is a comfort he hasn't had in an age. He sucks it greedily from her lips, as if he can inhale consolation.

She breaks away first, hesitant of such a brash move, her teeth lingering at his bottom lip a hint of her reluctance to relinquish such a hedonism.

She's unsure, he realizes, and he has never seen this in Hawkeye before. She's always clearheaded, precise; a world in which she is not is off-putting. He amends it by returning the gesture, hesitating a bit as he claims her mouth; relaxes when she lets him.

_Pretend_, she said and suddenly he understands. If they can lie – to themselves, to each other, perhaps they can forget for a while, can use each other to bring back what little humanity hasn't been stolen from them when they became everyday killers. There is safety in comfort; sanity.

He tugs at the buttons of her filthy uniform in wordless consent.

Fabric rustles, falls away and the world teeters on a precipice of war, threatening the tumble and shatter around them. His tongue finds her collarbone; he tastes the dirt and sweat on her skin and knows that is right. They are animals with bullets for teeth, meals shredded and left to rot instead of consumed. It is fitting that they are dirty among their mess of battle.

He pulls away, allows her to draw his shirt up over his head and she casts it carelessly into the corner as if it were something offensive. Her fingers are cold, pressing against his skin; she drags them over his shoulders, pausing at the deep cut interrupting smooth expanse of skin.

"Leave it," he hisses, drawing the reddened, marred flesh away from her reach before bending back over her, tongue brandishing a trail of saliva up her chest and over her shoulder. She acquiesces, leaving the flawed fractures alone, touch exploring what is left unblemished. Ghostlike, her hands flitter down his sides, across his stomach, back up to touch his face before setting firmly back to his shoulders.

A note of inquiry gives birth from his throat as she sets her palms and _pushes_. The world is inverted suddenly, directions flipping, churning until he comes to rest on his back on top of his bedroll, his tent mate leaning over him. _Well, this is odd,_ is the only thought he can form.

She digs at the button on his pants – the only piece of clothing left between them and draws back the zipper. Another moment of struggle sees the cumbersome trousers down around his ankles; still in the way, but neither of them willing to compromise another moment to take care of the problem.

She swings her leg up and out, coming to rest so that she is kneeing over him and Edward can feel her naked flesh pressed against his thighs. With hands that are no strangers to carnal secrets, she wraps her fingers around the base of his cock. He gasps at the contact, tries to press up into it, but her warm weight resting atop his legs prevents him from such movement.

She gives him a few leisurely strokes and he thinks he will go mad if she does not grip tighter, move faster, _something_. He gives a strangled groan; something akin to a plea but lacking the words behind the intention. She fails to understand his message though, and through great effort, he pries open his eyelids and lifts his head as if it is the weight of the world.

Hawkeye naked is a unique sight to behold. She is grace and power astride his hips; something raw and harsh despite her soft curves and womanly shape. The sight of her stroking his cock with one hand and rubbing at her own pelvic region with the other just makes his _harder_; painfully so.

He digs his feet in and pushes upward, succeeding in bending his knees and she slides down the length of his thighs and he gasps at the sudden sensation of warm, wet heat pressing down against his cock, mind flittering off and away somewhere, leaving him behind with only the company of screaming nerves, blood pounding in his ears like an orchestra of drums, erratic and wild as they race towards climax.

He can hear her breath hiss through her teeth above him, and an instant later, she lifts herself up, stops stroking him, much to his chagrin. It's hard to breathe, impossible to think when unadulterated _need_ courses through his veins, lacing down his thighs and his muscles are so tense he can feel them tremble beneath his skin.

Her grip around him tightens purposefully and she guides him into her, sliding down to the hilt on a slow, controlled burn. He gasps, grip lost on the world; mind MIA somewhere in the atmosphere or perhaps out amongst the rest of the torn faces that can't be identified and left to the birds. It doesn't matter, buried beneath friction, pressure enveloping his cock and her hands find his torso, her grip tight on his shoulders as she rides him.

They grunt and fuck like the beasts they are, muscles straining as he feels Hawkeye lift herself again and slide back down, fast and hot and he claws at her naked back with filthy fingernails and metal digits.

She hisses as she draws herself up and impulsively makes a grab for his left hand. He feels his grip lost on her back and she is directing his fingers elsewhere. He can feel the pull and slide of his own cock so close by as she continues to rock above him, his fingers adding to her stimulation as he rubs at her clit.

Sex between them was never meant to be pretty or sweet. She rises and falls as fast as her trembling leg muscles will allow her to and his automail digs into the skin of her back hard enough to leave red marks and bruises. Sex between them is fast, hard, and desperate; two people clinging to a dying world, using their bodies to remind themselves what it means to be alive. To live, to fuck until they forgot that all around them there were corpses and fires. Three tents down housed row after row of beds that held men that would never walk again and they made love like wolves, slamming into one another as fiercely as the enemy clashed on the battlefield.

His hips move of their own volition, instinctively rising to meet her downward thrusts, head thrown back, eyes clenched in blissful mindlessness. Pressure tickles its way up and down his spine like fingers over piano keys, every note memorized to perfection until vision is not needed to know where the next finger will fall to string along a frantic melody of sensations and nerves.

He is sweating, salt emerging from his skin to form droplets across his skin, face flushed and he can only imagine Hawkeye looks the same. He doesn't know, can't find the will to lever open his eyes to check, not when his entire body clenches, everything within him feeling as it might explode; a human grenade, more powerful than any that have been launched at him in the insanity of battle.

His right hand slips across her back, grip turned slippery with perspiration and it doesn't matter, doesn't matter because the world is a coiled spring inside of him and it's been pulled and stretched out to its limit and it has no choice anymore but to snap back or break in two.

He is going to come, buried as far as he can go inside of her. A flash of insight jolts in his mind and for an instant he considers pulling out, afraid of the consequences of coming inside of her. But then pitiful knowledge crashes down on him and he is not so naïve to think that pulling out will undo the damage that might have already been done.

And so, he can't bring himself to care. His consequences he will take, if it comes to that. Unprotected sex was a foolish thing to consent to, but he can't worry about that now, not when his heart is singing with adrenaline, every organ bellowing for release.

But she beats him to it. Lifts herself up, legs trembling with the constant strain and sinks back down, his fingers pressing up against her clit at an angle he hasn't hit before and she is crying out through clenched teeth, movement ceased and her body tightening around him.

The sudden increase in pressure is enough to send him reeling into the mindless abyss of orgasm, throat working out a noise that is low and bestial, body going rigid as he comes. It washes over him in waves of sensation so intense, it hurts. That is good too, because he should not be allowed pleasure when he is filthy; a dirty tool of the state, killing people because he's been told they're the enemy. But still he comes, nerves shrieking treason against his brain, driving out thoughts before they can take hold and destroy the moment.

When he finishes, blinks back into the realm reserved for those that can think beyond what their dicks inform them, there is an eerie silence looming to greet him. His blood hammers in his ears, a pace to match his gradually slowing heartbeat and he can only grunt as Hawkeye pulls herself off of him, carefully moving to lay beside him. And then…

_ohgodwhatdidhejustdo?_

Perhaps even more heinous than the crimes he's committed in the name of his country is this. Because what could be worse than bringing a new life out amidst wilted blossoms of the world; red and black roses, cultivated with dead ashes, blooming with colors stained like slaughter. It would be damned from the day it was born and it is his fault; _all his fault_ because he didn't stop to _think_.

He turns doe eyes to Hawkeye, doubt scribbled in the margins of his face and nudges her to get her attention. She is staring out at the side of the tent again, brow creased with some private thought of her own, but she turns to him when she feels his touch against her bare side.

"What if you—" a flush burns across his face and it has nothing to do with arousal this time. He stammers, trying to come up with a polite way to word such a blunt question. "get…y'know," he gestures vaguely towards his own belly in some sick mockery of charades.

"I won't."

Saved again. He lets out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. "How do you know?"

"I know." She answers simply, and leans over to press a kiss against his lips to discourage further questions. He heeds her warning, lets the subject drop, and lets his thoughts drip back away from the alarming subjects that are constant companions in war.

He considers, for a moment, making his way across the cramped space of their tent and sorting out his clothes, but can't seem to find the ambition. At some point, his pants had been lost, shed from his ankles like a second skin and kicked across the tent. He is even more tired than he had been when they'd arrived for desperately needed sleep and for some reason, he can't remember why it had been elusive to him anymore.

His gaze shifts back to Hawkeye and he sees that she is already asleep, her fingers claiming a fistful of his hair in a white-knuckled grip. His eyelids droop.

Tomorrow he will pack up this tent and they will move on to the next site, countless soldier feet tramping down a trail, marching until who knows when and then he will go back to horror and remembering that he is miserable here without Al, without comfort, without a shred of humanity to keep him from doing awful things. But for now, he can pretend that he is safe; pretend he is not a creature of carnage and simply sleep until dawn.

For a moment, he can pretend there is hope.

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I don't generally demand feedback or say plz reveiw or I wunt rite NEmore guyz, but this fic... well, I'd really like to know what you thought. Especially as far as characterization goes. :) 


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